In early October 2019 David Cook and I visited Peter Doig:Paintings at Michael Werner, and Cy Twombly: Sculpture at Gagosian, both in London. Afterwards, we discussed the shows by email. The following is the result of several weeks of electronic toing and froing...part two
“Untitled (Wheelchair)”, 2019
Oil on linen
102 1/2 x 78 3/4 inches
260 x 200 cm
Richard:
I don’t know – could it be that the sunshine has burned off the early mist to reveal a new kind of daylight in the paintings? The colours are not bolder or brighter, but there are bigger areas of a single colour than I remember in the earlier works. The compositions seem starker, more striking and consequently more memorable. To me these paintings are like crystallisations of the promise of the earlier works – as if his vision is clearing and he no longer feels the need for so much decoration.
Let’s talk about Untitled (Wheelchair), which exists in two versions in this exhibition – one much smaller than the other.
David:
I am really struggling with the space and geometry of Untitled (Wheelchair), which seems perverse and incoherent, particularly the larger version. Yes, there is a certain warmth to it with the colours and the setting, and the gesture of the man pushing the chair across (I am hoping not just into) the road.
I have problems though. The lack of shadows flattens the space yet the perspective is so forced, and the clash is very uncomfortable. My eye just can’t make sense of the wall with the railing. The road does not feel flat, it seems like some giant wizard’s hat on top of the guy in the wheelchair. The wheels of the chair seem drawn with a kind of geometric care that is jarring because it is not echoed elsewhere. The shape play with the roadsign and the pole dead centre of the top of the canvas feels ungainly. The hills and trees have paint handled in a more doigy kind of way, suggestive poetic but they sit uneasily on the corner, penned in behind the red railing of the forced perspective wall.
Strollers by Sea
Oil on Canvas
28 x 36 inches
1936
The flattening approach can work, but here it feels too clunky and subverted by extraneous naturalistic detail that destroys the effect. (Thinking of those wheels and the railing here). For contrast, this Milton Avery picture from 1936 (!). It has light, atmosphere and character but does not sacrifice its central abstract ideas to figurative description. Or at least not so much – it is a tightrope. The handling of the paint is very flat too, but there is a design to the depth and movement of it, which sells the shapes as a pure composition. Then the rather lumpy and odd drawing of the figures takes on life and believability too.
Richard:
As always I like the “irritations” a lot – for me the sum of the things you describe as problems adds up to an image brimful of life and questions. There’s a tenderness to the image that is piqued by the jarring juxtapositions of for example that geometric wheel with the sumptuousness of the standing figure’s coat and the ambiguous expression on the face of the man in the wheelchair. Yes, I love the echo of Doig’s earlier paintings in the hills and trees, but there’s a melancholy sweetness to the way he undercuts it with the pseudo-Expressionist handling of the road at the foot of the picture. The image is deceptive – it looks like a simple design, but it’s teeming with little tensions.
It makes me laugh how opposite our views of this painting are! I like it so much it has replaced the image that springs to mind whenever I hear Doig’s name.
Going back to your earlier point about it looking like any old Expressionist painter’s work – this is a question we’ve not asked before – is that a bad thing?
To be continued…
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Part one of this conversation can be found here.
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I discovered the works of Peter Doig last year while browsing Instagram. I like his work very much.
I also discovered works by other artists like Lois Dodd, Kyle Staver, and the beautiful watercolors of Charles Burchfield.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts on Doig.
Hi Julie! Yes, me too – it’s very rich work and satisfying to me – I can easily get lost in it. I particularly like these newer paintings because they are so bold and appear a little “risky” in the way they were constructed.
Thanks very much for the tips! I’m always looking to expand my knowledge and I’ll no doubt enjoy doing a bit of research into Lois, Kyle and Charles.
On “Untitled (Wheelchair)”, I agree with Richard’s take, but laughed with David’s criticisms. I think you are both right in your different approaches to the painting. My first impression, not knowing this was a new piece, and since you’d shown a much earlier one last post, was that this was an early work, in which case I was impressed with how prescient it was. His color and flat compositiong is strong, as those are his strengths, and there does appear to be less fussiness with the paint.
However, I also found the clash between the flattened picture plane and 3D perspective awkward. Does the guy in the wheelchair only have one leg? Kinda’ looks like Doig either didn’t have much life drawing, or else doesn’t mind deliberately botching anatomy. The man in the wheelchair’s eye is on the side of his head like a dear, not the front like a human. He could have played down the too-geometrical wheels of the wheelchair if he didn’t make the rims so light. One of the other of them would have been in shadow. Which brings up the fact that neither man has a shadow, in which case they both look like cut-out figures. And the street is only wide enough for a half of a car. There’s a man standing on the sidewalk on the left in the distance, but the sidewalk is too narrow in the foreground for more than a chihuahua. It’s not clear why one side of the sidewalk extends further than the other, but not enough to serve any purppose. A few of those things read as enormous oversites, or full on mistakes, especially the sidewalk that can fit a man in the distanc, but not in the foreground. I assume he’s not doing Escher here. What I see is a painter with a really good eye, but who can’t paint traditionally for squat, which is a mixed blessing. Even within his own style, I find the bright yellow of the rear of the building too much. I’d definitely darken that up a bit, even using some of the yellows by the policeman, or whatever he is. The profile of his head is about the most elegant thing in the painting.
Overall I quite like it, though. It works well enough by its own inherent logic, and the amalgam of strengths and weaknesses that Doig possesses. I can’t get into the Milton Avery painting at all. Yuck! But then again a lot of Matisse doesn’t do squat for me either.
Just had to throw in my two cents.
Cheers
Thanks very much for your comment Eric! I totally agree about Milton Avery.
Hi Eric, I enjoyed your comment too. This piece reads as if I don’t like Doig’s work – but I really do! I miss the presence and atmosphere of the earlier work though. Just an old romantic I guess.
I agree with you about the atmosphere, and I think you mentioned the link to Gauguin, which I also see. Not juust because of the expat in “exotic” location thing (which I share), but because of the flattening of the picture plane, flat and rounded shapes of color, and the apparently inevitable awkward instances where flattening perspective doesn’t quite work.
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